‘The Database’ by Lev Manovich:

This reading goes into the organization of new media objects, where they do not necessarily have a beginning, middle or end, instead they organize themselves, as they are individual items.
The different types of databases are:
– Hierarchical, network, relational and object-orientated.
Manovich suggests that the computer age has brought with it a cultural algorithm = Reality > Media > Data > Database. This database is seen through a list of items, where it refuses to be ordered. This algorithm is shown with both games and narratives, as the user has to uncover the underlying logic when going through them. These databases then become the center of the creative process, within the computer age, where new media objects consist of one or more interfaces, with only one database of its material.
To have something qualify as a narrative, it has to contain an actor and a narrator; contain three distinct levels consisting of the text, the story, and the “fabula”; and its contents should be “a series of connected events caused or experienced by actors“.

‘Chapter 5: Agency’ by Janet H. Murray

Murray goes on to talk about the importance of agency and how it is linked to new media objects, and how we participate with traditional narrative form, which generally limits our sense of it. Agency is offered to us through traditional art forms, but is usually more prominent in the games that we play, when the narrative is moved to the computer, which is then moving the narrative to a realm that is already shaped by the relevant game. When working with a linear story, it doesn’t matter how complex it is, it will always move towards a single version of a human event. Murray suggests that “a game is a kind of abstract storytelling that resembles the world of common experience but compares it in order to heighten interest“. In a successful game, the players are able to have constructive freedom, where they can then improvise the story, and can combat the narrative in multiple ways, depending on their goals.